"They mourned and wept and fasted till evening for Saul and his son
Jonathan, and for the army of the Lord and the house of Israel, because they
had fallen by the sword." - 2 Samuel 1:12
How would you respond if you heard
something bad happened to someone who had been trying to cut off your head for
several years? King Saul had been seeking to kill David for many years before
Saul was thrust into battle against the Amalekites. In this final battle, a
sword killed Saul. When the news reached David, instead of rejoicing that his
enemy was no longer a problem for him, he responded in a totally different
manner. He mourned. Imagine that; he mourned for the one who sought to kill
him.
This is a sign of one who can look
past an individual who is the source of pain and consider how God views him.
God looks on that individual and sees his needs and knows why he responds the
way he does. When we begin to see people as God does, we'll no longer look at
them as enemies, but as souls in need of grace. This is how Jesus could give of
His life for us. He saw our great need, not what we did to Him. When someone
wrongs you, do you seek to retaliate, or do you pray to understand the need
behind the offender's actions? For several years a person was a source of
constant pain and retaliation toward me. There was nothing I could do to change
it. God allowed me to go beyond the person's actions to understand what was the
source of his need. When I gained that understanding, God gave me a picture of
this person inside a prison cell and in bondage. This bondage made him respond
to life in this way. I was able to pray for him and genuinely love him in spite
of the fact that he persecuted me. This is the kind of love Jesus wants us to
have when He tells us to love our enemies and pray for those who spitefully use
us.
I believe God does a special work of
grace in those who go beyond the realm of normal response to persecution. He
brings us to a level of grace we never thought possible. Describing how God
worked in Joseph's life, Francis Frangipane reveals what happens when we tap
into this grace:
God made him fruitful in the very
things that afflicted him. In the land of your affliction, in your battle, is
the place where God will make you fruitful. Consider, even now, the area of
greatest affliction in your life. In that area, God will make you fruitful in
such a way that your heart will be fully satisfied, and God's heart fully
glorified. God has not promised to keep us from valleys and sufferings, but to
make us fruitful in them. [Francis Frangipane, Place of Immunity (Cedar Rapids,
Iowa: Arrow Publications, 1996), 93]
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